Journey
by Princess Sassafras
Summary: YAOI, mild angst, sap, and citrus. A story about a beginning. [5x4x5]
1. All I Want

"JOURNEY"

Chapter 1: All I Want

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: My first official 5x4. 'Woah daddy!' This chapter's POV: Chang Wufei.

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All that I want: his fair head resting against my breast. That is all that I have ever wanted. However, love and loyalty do not always live in the same house. They live in mine; they are housed in _my_ chest.

My heart leaps when he smiles, and the cage of my ribs constricts when he is in pain. He would fight and die for me, just as he would for them. He has told me so. But I don't care about fighting and dying. I would _live,_ for him. I fear he would never, could never, truly live for _me_. Or speak his mind to me in some quiet room. I could speak mine freely, to him. And he would accept, and know, and maybe even love. If he only knew my mind.

My mind is important to me. But to him, the Heart is all that matters. Somehow my heart never makes it past its physical place, never makes it to my lips. Or it rearranges itself into words that sound more appropriate, but far less real. 'I love you' becomes 'It is unwise for you to go out unaccompanied.' You see my problem now.

A tender touch turns halfway into a brotherly one, or into none at all. I shift my hand so quickly to land upon some inanimate object, that he can never tell that it wanted to touch his hand or his arm or his face.

A woman's grace grows dim next to the way he tilts his chin. Her eyes hold no spark to his. The hollow at the base of his neck enthralls me. His manner enchants me: the way he gestures animatedly and his brow draws upward in sincerity. I have been told my face is impassive, my lips cruel, and my gestures sharp and threatening. I could never argue. If only I could soften myself for him, make my words and my face more palatable to him. But it is hard to undo years of programming.

For him. For him I will try.

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	2. All I Need

2: All I Need

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: Quatre's POV.

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I wish I could remember how it began. So long ago, it seems like twenty years. But we aren't much older than twenty, are we? So it can't really have been that long ago. One day, I heard him speak and his words became ingrained in my skin. Much like tattooing. When the war began, knowing what I was to become, I went alone and unaccompanied to a place where no one of my House's station would go. The Underground Market. The man I found there was skilled and poor, and I let him drag the inked needles across my hipbone in the shape of arched wings. And I swore that no matter how many times I was struck down, I would rise up for someone or something I believe in. My spirit will never die.

So long ago, it seems like forever. Especially since so much has been left unsaid and undone. He left so many times, ran away to be the one opposite the four. He ran off more than Heero ever did. That is saying a lot.

Somehow each time he would reappear, his face a little older and his stance a little stiffer, my heart would beat a little quicker. Now I cannot even breathe when he's near. His words burn me, cut me, or stroke me with a force I have never known. He cannot know. If he does, he continues regardless, relentlessly. Speaking with that brutal passion.

I have cried, and I am not ashamed exactly, only cautious. Tears alone are much easier to undo than tears in the face of the one…crying in front of him could be a mistake.

I have imagined his bronze arms surrounding me, his sharp lips kissing me. His eyes softening for me. Sometimes I imagine that they do, but I brush the thought away. He looks at me as he always has, or with only a little more camaraderie perhaps than he used to.

I have never seen his black eyes so tender as the day he passed a small girl in the street looking for her mother. The girl was Caucasian, but with stunning dark hair and eyes. And she was so stricken with grief, that Wufei stopped and kneeled before her. It looked to me like a wolf lowering itself before a kitten.

"Where is your mother?" So stern, but so sincere was his tone that the little girl stopped crying and looked up into his angled face.

"She-she w-went to gh-get ma-my brother's shoe…" Wufei continued to stare earnestly, as if he were really listening. The child finally calmed enough to speak coherently. "He threw it in the bushes in the park and ran away, and she went to find him and told me to stay put, but then a man with a cart came by and he was scary, so I ran! And now I can't find her!" Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears. "I want ma-my m-mother!"

And Wufei reached down slowly and picked her up, and walked with her into the park. And she let him. Not knowing who he was and not caring. Just as an animal can sense a person's nature, children have that untainted sense of who is there to help and to harm. She sobbed on his shoulder all the way back to where she had been. And Wufei put her down before her hysterical mother, bowed, and walked away.

There have been times when I needed that: to be carried back to the place where I was safest. I can't find my way back myself. Or maybe I just need to be held against someone…against his chest. It is hard to need something you can't have. Wanting is so much easier, and can be filled by something substitute. But needing, needing is too great a thing.

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_Ain't it the truth? _

Princess S.


	3. Yin and Yang

3: Yin and Yang

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: Quatre's POV again.

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I remember the first time he said it to me: _Quatre…you should not go out so much alone. _I was perturbed, though later I realized it was concern that made him say it. I wanted to shout that I'm never alone, ever, or even alone with one other human being. People always surround me; they're there in droves. My sisters, my men, and the servants...Never alone, always making decisions, always giving advice, or taking it when I don't really need it. I want to escape.

But I love being alone with him.

I've never felt more at peace than when I stand with him. Our few quiet minutes on a morning balcony, before the chaos, are the new highlight of my day. He stares coolly into the distance, sipping his green tea. Sometimes we are silent, just like this. It's wonderful.

Other times I have something to rant about. At first he seemed a little bothered, or something else perhaps, but time passed and soon he seemed to enjoy giving me advice. And every once in a while he will give a rant of his own. They are always extensive and well organized, his spiels. They are always about the meaning of his life…or any life. Life itself interests him: why we are here. We have this in common.

But we have different answers. He seems to think we are here to unlock some great mystery. I think the joy is in the mystery. He asks why I don't have more questions. I reply that I do, but I think the questions are what is important and not the answers. We will never run out of questions.

He searches for his destination. He balks when I say there isn't one. I said one morning—when we'd begun this same talk again—that it is the journey that is most important. He was silent for some time, and then he turned his angled face to me, no longer impassive, and said, "Then death is the only end."

"No. No, it isn't. Death is the start of something new. Haven't you ever heard of the Circle of Life?"

"That damned movie with all those lions."

"No, you've watched too much Disney with Duo. I'm talking about something actual here." But I laughed. And he smiled. It made me warm all the way to my toes, his smile. It was like the melting of a great glacier, or the cracking grin of some imperious dragon.

I had known for some time, but began to wonder at it: my love for one so seemingly different from me. Oh, I know we're the same in at least one aspect: we are male. And obviously mutually attracted, though I did not know this until much deeper in. It is that our ethnicities, our backgrounds, religions, and lifestyles are so different. But that doesn't nullify the chemistry, it intensifies it. He is a mystery to me. I love a good mystery. Trust in Allah to make life more difficult.

Wufei would attribute our attraction to Yin and Yang no doubt. Where white is at the greatest concentration, there is black. And where black is its blackest, there is a piece of white.

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	4. Importance of the Journey

4: Journey

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: Wufei's POV.

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Days spent with him have made my mind weaker. Things slip past my lips that I do not mean to say. I do mean them, only not to say them. Things like, "I'm sure your sisters are jealous."

"Of what?" He asks, looking up at me from beneath beautiful bangs.

"Their only brother has more lovely hair than they do."

He blushes and smiles. I've foiled myself. But my comments are not always superficial. He is wiser than I ever could have imagined, and I do not mind telling him so…in small ways.

He says that what is important in life is the Journey. I wonder if this is true. But even though I am not certain, I admire his faith in himself. He does not wonder at his path, only follows it with a trusting heart. He is not afraid of hills he cannot see over. He is used to them. I have spent so much time despising them. I call it blindness: not being able to see where you're going. Quatre believes that blindness, and lostness, are a given. That's what questions are for, and asking them is what is important.

He is wise, but youth leaps out at me in his laughter. I make him laugh without meaning to. An insect in my face makes me swat it and curse. This he finds amusing, and laughs like tinkling bells. But his most beautiful laughter strikes at the strangest times, when I'm not even expecting such a reaction. Once he was speaking so forcefully about Fantasy and Fiction, and its importance to keeping alive the imagination, which he also thinks is vital, that I asked him if he believed in Unicorns. He laughed so forcefully then, his lips drawing back over white teeth and his eyes disappearing in creases, that I blushed. That only made him laugh harder. "I'm sorry, Wufei…" he apologized. "I am not laughing at you. Well I'm laughing at you, but not at _you_…"

"Oh, just give up." I said, and he quieted.

"But it's such fun." He made such a face at me then, I'll never forget. Sly. I felt an inferno in my belly then, and did not know why.

What I would not give to tease him back. I have been working on it for the past few months, but to no avail. He still surpasses me in humor and in etiquette.

Once when I was leaving the balcony, and we were off to start another long day, he put his hand on my arm to stop me. "Stay a little longer," he said. And he said it almost pleadingly, so what could I do but comply?

"They stretch on forever, don't they? The days, I mean." He looked ten years older for a split second, hunched over the railing, staring down at nothing. Staring into the bottomless pit of either paperwork or infiltration. Endless duty. I understood.

I was compelled to touch his hair, but moved my hand to his shoulder instead. He turned his pale face to me. "Quatre. If the Journey is what is important to you, then travel where you will. Not where you think you must."

It was my way of telling him to follow his heart. And he reached back and lay his hand on top of mine, and we stood there for what seemed a brief millennia. And then he smiled at me over his shoulder, and let me go.

I wanted so badly to kiss him then. It ached.

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	5. Lonely

5: Lonely

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: Quatre's POV.

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Why can't we just? What is stopping us? Do I imagine that look in his eyes; is it a mere reflection of what must be showing through in mine. Am I too hopeful?

I tend to let my thoughts run away with me, but they have never led me to a dead end. Over a seemingly-impossible hurtle maybe. But never a dead end. Please, dear God, don't let this be a dead end.

I still believe He has a sick sense of humor.

Months pass and still my mornings are brief and lovely, and my days stretch on in a lonely haze. So many people and still I feel lonely. It is funny…but I feel the most alone when I am with Wufei, but the least lonely. Strange that those words share no meaning with each other after all.

Why can't I touch him? Why can't I just say, _when I am with you I am satisfied for the first time and yet interminably dissatisfied_? Would he think me insane if I said it? I am not very bold in this. I hope that it's another one of those seemingly-impossible hurtles— that it's just that, and nothing more. I'll find myself on the other side in his arms, and will laugh at myself for such past frustrations.

_In his arms._

What a thrill it gives me to think it. Sometimes when I am truly alone I whisper it to myself. And then I hate myself for it; what if this road takes us far apart? Our lifestyles are dangerous enough. And he may not be one to even tolerate the affections of a man, however close they may have become. It is still uncertain. My life is uncertain; I should be used to it by now.

I am unwinding from my day, the quiet loneliness settling over me like a cold sheet. This is the only other quiet part of my day. Bedtime. But I'm not tired, not in the least. And even though he won't be there, I want to drink tea on the balcony, just to give myself that _feeling_. I do so sometimes, and it helps me ease my mind, and sleep comes more easily.

I'm still in my work clothes, minus the belt, the dress shoes, and the overjacket. I walk down the hall in my socks, my feet and my torso grateful to no longer be constricted. I make my way into the huge kitchen and start to make tea. I take it with me up the three flights of stairs—a small feat—and onto the balcony.

The sky is black. I breathe the fresh air. It's wonderful again.

"Can't sleep?" His voice startles me, but my subconscious tells me that I knew he was there all along. His face seems sharper in the moonlight, and steam rises from his cup. "If I had known you wanted any, I would have left the tea out."

"It's alright," I say, still trying to slow my heart down. "We drink a different flavor anyway."

He nods mutely, and returns to staring at whatever he was staring at before I arrived.

"Where are you looking?" I ask.

"At a memory." I can see a slight smile forming by the shadow in his chin.

"Penny for your thoughts. Actually I could spare a million dollars."

His smile widens.

"You're insufferable, Winner…" This comment pleases me. "But I'll tell you anyway. I was thinking about the day we met."

"Oh?" This comes as a surprise. I myself had never tried to travel that part of memory lane. "Refresh my memory, then."

He pauses. "I remember thinking…that braided one has a big mouth, and I never spared a thought for Yuy or Barton, but…I remember thinking 'Why on earth is that elegant looking man piloting a mobile suit for a living? He should have a career in politics or movies.' I didn't even know you were rich at the time."

"Would you have thought any worse of me if you had?"

"Wouldn't have mattered. I would have gotten to know you, and changed my mind. I have, you know."

I smile wryly. "Well, I'm glad you no longer think I'm a rich snob."

"You're a very cunning, occasionally imposing, rich snob."

"Ew."

"Oh, but I forgot endearing."

I can feel my face reddening, and I'm very glad it's dark. He must have sensed it anyway, because he falls silent. We stand that way for some time, finishing our tea and staring at Memory.

But reality takes hold. "I should get some sleep."

He turns to me. "Yes, you should. Your day starts much earlier than my own."

I let go of the railing regretfully and turn toward the doorway. "Goodnight, Wufei."

"Wait." He puts a hand on my arm. Another thrill passes through me. "Let me walk you there. You're on the way."

I can do nothing but nod and smile.

He takes our cups into the kitchen, and walks me down the hall, his shoes and my socked feet keeping time on the wooden slats. We are silent, and for the first time it is driving me mad. I cannot think of anything to say, and I desperately want to fill up the silence.

We come at long last to my door, and without even thinking I step over the threshold before turning around. It was an accident, a beautiful purposeful accident. His eyes catch mine like flame to tinder. I knew it was going to happen, and I let it. I'm letting it.

"Wufei…" I reach out and touch his arm. The Journey has led us here for a reason. I have topped the hill and here is the man I have hoped would be here with me. I stomach my fear, and reach for hope.

My grip on his arm tightens as I look into his inscrutable black eyes.

"Wufei, kiss me." I meant that to be a question, but it came out a direct order.

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	6. Topping the Hill

6: Topping the Hill

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: Wufei's POV. Citrus warning!

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"Kiss me." His blue eyes pull me into them and suck my body forward. To refuse would be the greatest sin. Refusal is wrong.

I cross the threshold willingly, but at his command. We are here for a purpose, though my brain cannot find it. My heart, though…my heart knows what it is.

The door shuts behind us, a finalization. He crashes into me, and I draw him up.

His lips are sweeter than I have ever imagined, and his touch is electric. When I bring my mouth to his, his whole frame shakes. My body echoes that passion. The blood is pounding in my head. It is pounding all through my body. It is almost too much to bear…almost.

His scent is warm and real, and his hands are real. One runs across my chest…that touch is cruel enough. The other trails lightly over, and over, the crease behind my ear and trails down my cheek to our lips. That hand trembles.

Once I begin kissing him, I cannot stop. His tongue is something I must have. His short breaths are the sweetest air. Kissing him is too much, and not nearly enough.

I put my arm around his waist and pull him into me, and he is so pliant that my body throbs with joy. He arches into me, and moans plaintively. "_Wufei…_" Our lips separate and he brings his soft mouth to my cheek. No one has ever kissed my cheek. Some woman thought she could have me, thought she could shove her serpent tongue down my throat. But never such a kiss—he raises his head and looks into my face. His lashes are the color of honeysuckle, like his curls. His eyes will be the death of me.

"Wufei, I want you. _I need_—" It is too much. I cannot let him go on, so I take his mouth again. He sighs and falls heavily against me. If I cannot tell him what my heart wants, I will show him. I turn us around and push him up against the wall, cradling his hips with one arm and his head with my hand. I kiss him as if he is the whole world. He shakes almost violently.

I lean down to claim the hollow at the base of his throat. I conquer it. I feel his pulse rise and fall against my tongue. He touches my hair, far too carefully, and I guide his inquisitive fingers to the tie at the base of my neck. I hear his gasp—of pleasure?—when my hair falls around his hands. I stifle my own gasp in his shoulder. No one has ever done this—touched my hair. It sends shivers up my spine. Especially since it is him, his long white fingers running carefully over my scalp.

I find that I am untucking his shirt, and that he is letting me. Arching to assist me. I lift it and gently touch his belly, the quivering muscles, and the fine trail of hair. I let my thumb dip briefly into his navel, run my fingers over each rib slowly, up and up, and circle his nipples with the lightest of touch. I lean in and kiss each one softly. His fingers clench in my hair. I take one into my mouth, the one over his fast beating heart, and suck. His hips come off the wall violently, but he pins my head to the spot. I am so hard and on edge, I am sure I am no good for him anymore. I run my hands up his sides to his armpits and lift the shirt over his head, being careful of his ears. Then I kneel and press my face against his belly. When I look up it is effortless to smile at him, he is so beautiful. His eyes widen in surprise and delight at my expression. He touches my lips. I take his hand and kiss each fingertip. His eyes fall nearly shut, and darken, and he draws his lower lip into his mouth. I take each finger into my mouth slowly, slowly, and then kiss his palm before moving my lips to his navel.

Clothing becomes an obstruction where it was once a protection. I unhook and unbutton his pants with fumbling fingers—_what a tricky make_—and fold the flaps of them open. Clean white briefs—his erection fighting the constricting cotton—and something dark peeking above the band of them. I draw the edge down with my fingers and find…wings.

Two perfect wings, like an angel or a bird of prey, one on each side of his smooth hipbone. I run my thumb over the spot. I look up wanting to ask him, but he smiles and shakes his head slightly. He will tell me later. Now is too hungry a time.

I pull his pants and briefs down in one swipe, they pool at his ankles, and his flesh bobs out of the fabric and curls against his belly. Golden curls, of a deeper shade than his platinum hair, cover the space between his thighs, and scatter themselves at random across his pale and beautiful legs. To touch him…

I look up, and nearly orgasm. His face is so full of hunger and apprehension, both, that it is impossible to look for long. I turn away, and to sate my own hunger, bring my mouth eagerly to the tip of his arousal, and suck. The back of his head hits the wall, making a sharp sound without my hand to cushion it. I almost pull away to look up, but his hands lower and seal themselves to my scalp, clenching there in a death grip.

I run my tongue all over him, from base to tip, and suck cautiously, unsure of what else to do. He makes no complaints, but bucks every so often, and moans when I pay attention to the sensitive tip. It oozes fluid, and tastes salty-tangy-sweet. When I move my head further down and then back up while sucking he makes the most noise and the most violent motion. So I do exactly that. And I enjoy every second.

His thighs begin to shake, his panting reaches a feverish pace, and he bends down and seems to want to curl around me, his knees buckling and his fingers fisting further in my hair. I suck him all the way down to the floor. I grab his ankles and spread his legs apart, and suck harder. I raise and lower my head more quickly. I am dizzy with the repeated motion, but I am intensely gratified to hear his moans.

We must make an erotic picture. I, fully clothed and on my knees between his legs, holding them apart and working his flesh with my mouth. He with one hand in my hair and one clenching thin air wildly above his head, or pulling at his own hair, or pressing against the wall. His lips are parted and his skin is wet with sweat. When his muscles finally spasm and he curls up around me, I slow my motions, and my mouth fills with fluid. I lick him clean, and he shudders, murmurs, and strokes my back. I lean up and take his mouth. I have never felt more like a god, or more like a man.

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	7. Look to the Horizon

7: Look To The Horizon

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: Quatre's POV, FINAL CHAPTER (if you could even call this a chapter).

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We made love like men starved of each other. We made love like we had done it before, but a long time ago. He was both gentle and rough, giving and demanding. His mouth gave me sweetness one second, and devoured me another. We took the Journey. We discovered things…but these I cannot tell you. The sweetest things I cannot tell you. They are too great to tell. One day…one day you'll top that hill yourself.

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Other than the weird chapter formation, what'd'ya think? It's not like I have any control over it. The inspiration comes, and goes, of its own will. Not sure if this was more sappy or citrus. Overwhelmingly both, probably.

Please REVIEW when you're done masturbating!

Princess S.


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